I finally got the last and final part for my 35mm DOF adapter today. After messing with trying to position the ground glass in the exact proper spot, which was far from fun, I was able to test it out. My first major impression of it is that it works wonderfully in lower light conditions. Shooting indoors with some general lighting will be a breeze. However, shooting outdoors will be an issue. It seems if I close the lens’s aperture too much, I get some hideous grain coming from the ground glass. This of course should be eliminated with some neutral density filters, which will allow me to keep the aperture open wide. I’m going to have to look around to see if there is maybe a solution to this problem.
Here’s a test shot showing my antique camera collection:
I’ll post some more info on how I built the adapter tomorrow.
Alright, so here is the results of my green screen test. As you can see, it’s a different shot. I had to reshoot because I found that with the previous light setup, there was way too much green spill. To fix this, I put some diffused lights directly on each side orthogonal to the green screen. Also, I reduced the auto sharpening on my Canon GL2 to get rid of some of the jaggedness caused by the mini-dv compression.
Here’s the original shot (heavily compressed of course):
And here’s the composite (most of the shadows I added using Apple Shake):
Today, I’ve been messing around with my green screen studio as I prepare to use it for the first time for a commercial. It seems mini-dv cameras aren’t the best choice of cameras to use for green screen. Mini-dv cameras compress the video signal quite substantially which adds artifacts around edges. These artifacts are really difficult to to get around when keying out the green screen. Take a look at the frame grab of some video I shot. Look at the edges between my pants and the green screen background. You can see all the artifacting. There are ways to get around this but it’s messy. The best way is to use a camera that doesn’t do this type of compression. In the digital realm, the best ones are digibeta cameras made by Sony. There may also be hope for HD cameras that send uncompressed video to HDMI ports (however, HDV cameras that only record to tape will have the same problems). Pros also use real film cameras and then telecine the footage to an uncompressed video format. However, if you’re stuck with mini-dv like I am, there are ways to work around this to a point. Take a look at some of these tutorials at CreativeCow. To pull it off, you’ll need Apple Shake though. The keying tools in apps like Final Cut Suite are just not powerful enough. I’ll be posting more information on what I did specifically for this shot tomorrow.
With everything going digital nowadays, most people tend to forget about the older way of filmming things with, well, real film. Of course, most of the film equipment that was used on Hollywood sets is still priced way outside of the range of a novice filmmaker. Most Hollywood films were and some are still shot on 35mm film which is expensive in and of itself. However, there are some interesting 16mm cameras out there in the world. Many professionals and film schools like the Bolex 16mm cameras, but they are quite expensive. Another option is a camera called the Krasnogorsk-3. The K-3, as it is also known, is a Russian made 16mm movie made up to the early 1990′s. There’s very little electronics in the camera as the motor system to drive the film is powered by a hand crank, making it a very rugged camera that can be taken pretty much anywhwere without having to worry about electrical access. The other neat part about this camera is that the newer models use the Pentax lens mount so you can use standard 35mm slr lenses. Besides the camera itself, if you look for it on eBay, you’ll find that most of the time the K-3 is sold in an entire kit full of filters and accessories for usually under $300. This camera may just give you the opportunity to shoot some creative footage on real film that won’t cost you an arm and leg.
After being inspired from watching the video I posted yesterday, I decided to do a bit of research on building my own digitally stabilized camera mount. My first problem I had was finding a way to sense movement so I can correct the movement. Like what the video preluded, the gyrostabilized camera mount used gyroscopes. Although this does work, gyroscopes are not cheap especially since you need to have at least a dual axis gyroscope sensor. And, then you have to interpret the gyroscope data which isn’t easy. So, after a bit of searching, I found a sensor called an inclinometer. An inclinometer detects the angle at which the sensor is tilted off level. With a dual axis inclinometer, I can then find the tilt of a plane which will let me stabilize and level the plane using servos. I am thinking maybe an accelerometer might be useful as well to determine the speed of the correction. Besides the sensors, I still need to figure out how exactly I am going to physically build this thing, and how to do the robotic stuff.
A gyrostabilized camera mount is basically a camera mount that uses gyroscopes to stabilize any unwanted motion when moving the camera. Take a look at this one made for helicopters:
That video has inspired me to try to create my own system. I got a tripod ball head that I think I could use to create a gyrostabilized mount using servos and some form of gyro sensors. Hopefully I can get my hands on some sensors without spending alot of money.
Alright, so most of you probably don’t know what a lensbaby is. A lensbaby is a lens for SLR cameras that allows you to really play with the focus so you can artistically create interesting effects. It’s a kin to the really expensive tilt and shift lenses available for SLRs that allow you to off center the focal plane. A lensbaby gives you even more control allowing you to select just the item you want to be in focus and everything else will be out of focus. Now here comes the interesting part. What if you stuck one of these on a 35mm DOF adapter for your DV camcorder? You could make some really interesting shots with this thing. It allows for great artistic options in videography as well what it was originally meant for in photography. The manufacturer even decided to make a dedicated lensbaby that has a particular mount just for cine movie cameras. Just take a look at some of their sample footage to see what I’m talking about. It’s really spectacular.
Both Nikon and Canon have recently announced new DSLR cameras with the ability to shoot moving images. This is a quite interesting development. These cameras, since they’re for professional photographers, have extremely large CCDs in them so they can easily produce a good HD video. They also use 35mm lenses which give the same depth of field as what would I would achieve with the DOF adapter I’m building. These things can definitely change the playing field a bit in videography. But, it seems their strengths inherently produce many weaknesses. The first is the fact that they are DSLRs. The bodies are ergonomically not made for shooting moving images. The other is their CCDs. From reports that tested the video functions of these cameras, the image capture system is too slow causing weird distortions in the image when moving the camera. However, despite some of their weaknesses, these cameras might perform well for certain jobs, especially if you want that great shallow DOF. It should be interesting to see the improvements in the next generation of these cameras.
It could be true! My production company, GenerationOne, has historical been a one man team. Which, generally, makes what I can film to be quite limited. However, I got a few requests out to some friends of mine to join me to help film “The Geek Sacrifice” and the responses have been quite positive so far. I’ll see for sure tomorrow and later in the week. But if I can just keep one past this short film person to help me, I may just be able to start filming the “This Old Gadget” video podcast I’ve been wanting to film. Vermyndax, if you’re reading this post, this may be just the catalyst I needed to get everything operational…
